Perchance to Dream
by Vena Grey
Summary: The spirit suffers when all doors are opened to the same extent it does when all are barred.


**Perchance to Dream**  
_A Vampire Diaries fiction by Vena Grey_

Disclaimer: Sometimes, I like to play with other people's characters.

This is the brainchild of a lone star beacon of inspiration and a series of sycophantic reviews requesting reprisal of my last effort at this; just goes to show that it's not only opposites that attract. Were I one for classification, I would call it the musings of our favourite doppelgänger circa the middle to end of season three, post return of Nice Salvatore and around the time of her most recent road trip with Naughty Salvatore. However, context isn't that important with this one, as those who can get through it will quickly note.

As for me, I'm supposed to be through with fanfiction, so this little beastie is clearly just because I love you.

That said, because this piece is somehow even _less_ user-friendly than "The First Time," consider yourself warned that although I love you, my writing style doth change for no woman.

* * *

"_I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story._

_From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Atilla and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out._

_I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose."_

_- The Bell Jar, p. 77_

* * *

On the one hand, there was stability, protection, and peace.

She already knew everything he was because he had laid his soul bare. Because he kept nothing from her, he became a part of her, nearer and more familiar to her than her own heartbeat. When she was in his arms, she felt safe, protected, cherished; he knew her every sinew, every fold of her skin, every dark freckle that marked its surface, and, most closely of all, every cell of blood that ran through her veins. They fit together perfectly. When they walked, they danced as a pair in complete synchronization. With him, she never had to question tomorrow, for tomorrow would always be good.

On the other hand, there was passion, excitement, and chaos.

His eyes could ignite her very being on fire. Every hard stare he gave her was full of everything she would have already known, had she been dealing with the other hand; this was the stare of an angry predator, an invisible and lethal black panther. He made her raise her guard and he didn't let her put it down, for to put it down would be to give herself over to the fire and watch herself burn. He might not be able to touch her with her guard up, but both of them knew he saw through her as though she were made of air. He knew her insecurities and he knew how to drive her crazy—but because he knew how to drive her crazy, she knew he also knew how to love her with reckless abandon, as a force that balanced his own rather than as a princess that had to be cared for.

They were two sides of the same coin. They were not opposites, but they needed each other, and as equally as they needed each other they needed her that much more.

And because they both needed her, she found it that much harder to choose between them.

* * *

In the back of her head there was always a pull, something tugging on the silver chord that bound her to safety. He had been her first of everything. He had been the first to arrive on the scene of her life as she'd known it screeching to a halt on Wickery Bridge; he'd been the first to see past the pale film that death, denied its due, cast over her eyes and through to the light they both knew was beneath it. He'd been the first to make a move through the ruins the crash had left behind. Because he'd been the first to make such a move, he had been the one to capture her freshest picked from desolation, a lotus amongst absolute wreckage.

In many ways he had put her back together. He had been her pillar of strength while the head of his pendulum wrapped around the very same pillar in order that he keep himself from coming unglued as well. She was everything that tempted him, the ghost of one who had only ever lured him into relinquishing the control he'd built his life on; anyone could see, though, that the light that moved her shined brighter, purer, than that of the ghost that cast her reflection over her face, mirroring her smile and every bat of her eyelashes. To see her, them, was to see double. When he'd pulled her from the river, he'd taken the end of her silver chord and tied it to his own so he could bring her back to life and remade her into something that was only ever _her._

Now, everything was different. The pillar of strength that she had built her new life on had been torn down and Samson had been buried beneath it. The pendulum was set free to swinging; once it had swung full circle around to the opposite extreme, a cruel hand had fastened it in place once again. The chord he'd tied between himself and her was snapped. Once more, the end of her own chord floated in space.

She was detached and alone. The more she thought about it, the more everything seemed to change. Where once was an anchor, a tether to the end of her chord, there were now a thousand unwoven fibres ripped free from it after it was torn; her brother had been made to leave town for his own safety, but it felt personal to her. Her best friend, though ever steadfast, was finally being worn down from the many pressures loaded and attacks sustained simply by occupying that position. She didn't blame her for not being able to handle it anymore and turning her shoulder to her, if not her back. Everyone she cared for was suffering for her sake and not one of them was spared. And those were just her friends; let alone her enemies, all of whom sent their rockets at her walls at every moment they suspected she'd blinked her attention away for the slightest moment.

The more she thought about it, the more alone she felt. Not thinking about it was akin to not thinking at all, the result of such a state being complete and total inertia. Unmoving and alone, her silver chord reached out and touched only air; little did she know that another chord was poised to wrap around her own and tether it from falling any further.

So she cried out for the familiar in the midst of her freefall. She cried so hard that she didn't feel it when the end of her chord was taken hold of once again.

And for the king of immoderation that had set her falling, there was no answer but to keep doing the next thing.

* * *

Watching her sleep in his bed was a divine image his fallen eyes never thought they would see. Her long hair, disturbed by what had to have been a restless dream, laid out in a fan over his pillow; the covers had fallen away at her shoulder, baring a swath of olive-coloured porcelain touched only by the strap of her camisole. Her breathing had evened out, and even from his distance he could tell her heart rate had followed suit. Beneath the sweet-smelling olive, the sound of her lifeblood following its course made the dull roar of a river in a bed too narrow for its volume. Every breath pushed her own sweet perfume toward him, the effect akin to drinking an entire fifth of whiskey in an hour. All but the strongest of addicts could not withstand it, but he was so gone around her that no one else knew it.

A voyeuristic feeling swept him as he leaned forward in his chair and he suddenly felt guilty, as though he had walked in on her in the shower as opposed to her sleeping softly in his own bed. The daily torment she wrestled was hidden behind her eyelids, now, and she was at peace.

When she was sleeping, it's as though she were anyone else—anyone free of the pursuit of a murderous, vengeful family, free of the concerns that came with nearly every person she cared about being played a supernatural hand. That was not what ran through his mind, though a superego bent on keeping him ready to play the role of her guardian angel would not let him forget it; instead, his brow reflected the concentration by which he restrained his mind and controlled his hands from running through every dark strand that touched his pillow.

He loved her. It raced in his veins in the place of blood, it sang to him when she smiled. It burned when she came near, looked at, _thought about_ his brother, and hotter still when the voice below his consciousness screamed at him to _do something_ about it. He would have done anything for her and both of them knew that, but because she was pure, because she was an angel, because she was made of something higher than him, the voice below her own consciousness would not let her stop in her relentless attempts to martyr herself for the ones she loved, and the same voice that screamed at him conjured up a hundred thousand reasons he could not let her do that.

He was hard on her, yes, but that was how he loved her; quietly, fiercely. He would never play the knight—he couldn't, when he was born the king of darkness.

* * *

He was at a loss as to where to go. There were too many consequences for making either choice; he couldn't protect her anymore by maintaining his farcical truce with his enemy, nor could he by giving it up and returning to her side as his increasingly dominant light half so longed. There was no way to win: in order to protect her, he had to keep her enemy away from her, an enemy each party knew was far craftier than him. Only when he tapped into his own darkness, a darkness darker than that of his enemy, could he hope to do so adequately enough to protect her, and the consequences of that entailed losing the part of himself that she loved.

She did not love his darkness, because it was a pitch-black, inky, desolate thing capable of drowning out her light. It was too strong. A little voice from within his sub-conscience told him that meant she only loved half of him; if she couldn't love his darkness, she couldn't love the whole of him as she thought she did, though this was a voice below his consciousness that registered only as the thorn in his foot that kept him from running back to her with all available speed.

He did not sleep often, for he did not have the need. When he did, his dreams were white, filled with the light he wished would sink into him and burn the darkness away so there would be nothing left to keep her from loving him as he did her.

* * *

Only under the bright, full moons did she ever truly feel safe going outside at night. Nestled in the space between the balmy summer and the chill of autumn, the western wind blew dry and smelling of pine trees. It was late enough in the season that the summer swarms of insects had subsided, the kind of sleepless night that, had it been a year or even two previous, she would have passed writing in her journal on the porch swing or taking her hot tea with a good book. With the weight of the world limiting her ability to stand, it was all she could do to keep her head upright as she peered into the woods; her eyes ached with sleeplessness, but her nerves buzzed with action as though they themselves were fighting it.

All she ever seemed to do these days was fight, anyway. The more the people she cared about fell away, the more she seemed to push them, as though she couldn't stand to have them halfway in or out. If she was going to have pain, let it come all at once so she could deal with it more quickly.

Her brother and her best friend were constant aches in her chest, as though her heart itself had pulled two of the critical muscles that kept it beating. After a while, she got used to it, and she found her mind ever drawn to the first of everything that had kept her stable after her last close call with destruction. She couldn't forget him, couldn't let him go, and she hated it; once deceptive voice from within a conflicted superego whispered to her that she owed him her life, so she couldn't afford to forget him. A louder, more rational voice told her that made no sense, and that she would be happy only when she could let him go.

It made sense to side with the rational voice. Really, it did. But to a heart so worn out by doing the right thing for the greatest number at every turn of every day, doing what made the most sense was so tiring it was a perverse form of comfort to console herself with her longing for the one she had lost to his own great darkness, the same one to whom the quiet voice told her she owed her life and therefore could not abandon.

The battle in her mind played out in her nerves, pinching her temples and tying knots in her back. It kept her awake for sometimes days on end and drained the life force out of her voice. As she fought herself, dwelling on the unpleasant matters of how alone she was and what she had to do next to preserve her dwindling family, she drove herself further and further into darkness until her nerves were numbed to the very touches she needed to survive.

Her spirit was dying while her body lived. She rested her head against a column on the great porch and willed her eyes to close, perchance to dream of what it felt like to be something other than what she was.

* * *

There was no way to know how dark was too dark. Clearly, she loved his brother, who was just as clearly no saint—but if she loved only his light, the question that remained was whether what she loved of him was equal or greater to that which she loved of his brother.

It was agonizing. He could see her affections weren't solely his own property anymore—anyone could see that, including the very enemy he protected her against. In the back of his mind, he knew she would have to choose. Because his own light was similar in strength to her own, he wanted to minimize the agony she must have felt over this decision. It was tempting to him to run away from it altogether, to give himself over to the pitch-black, inky darkness that both would allow him to best protect her and remove him from the equation that tormented her day and night.

He was running out of time. No longer was it simply a matter of his decision whether to protect her from near or from afar. His brother's darkness, once so repulsive to her, was becoming not only more and more palatable to her but less and less dark. Now, he was well and truly his rival, equally capable if not better at protecting her than he was, for he brought out the latent darkness within her that challenged her, serving as a second hilt to her strength. Now, the question was who was better for her—a question he knew she had to ask herself, though she did not yet know it.

It was excruciating, but from below his consciousness he knew what had to be done. At one point, he had been the best thing in the world for her. Then, the world turned.

* * *

He knew it had been three days since she had slept properly. When she fell asleep on the porch, she fell asleep so soundly that she didn't register when he picked her up and carried her upstairs, relishing the feel of the warm skin of her arms and back on his own. Though the impression of peace had settled over her features, her forehead remained tense, and it was familiarly difficult to fight the urge to touch her and smooth it out.

She never stopped fighting, not even in sleep. She was the strongest person he knew, much stronger than him, than his brother, or than anyone else she was protecting; perhaps that was why she was so adamant about doing so. It was the best thing and the worst thing about her all at once. She was the only one capable of resisting him and the only one he wished with every fibre of his being would stop insisting on it.

It was dark in his quarters despite the strength of the moon, the lights dimmed as low as they could go without being off. He laid her in his bed like she belonged there, as carefully as he would a child. She curled subconsciously into the new warmth. He found it hard to draw his hand away and all but impossible to leave her side.

Silently, he pulled up a chair and sat, watching her. He wanted to touch her and to comfort her, to wake her, to make love to her, and to care for her as a partner, not as a princess. But more than that, he wanted to sink into her mind and fight away the demons that wouldn't let her have peace even now. She was in agony—_all the time._ And she wasn't his, so there was nothing he could do about it.

Soon, she would have to make a decision that would end his own suffering, the product of the maybe-something that stood between them and nothing or everything. The prospect of nothing was agonizing, but he would survive. But the prospect of everything? He couldn't think about it, lest he raise his hopes any further than they'd already risen.

* * *

From within a misty world of grey, she held two stones, one in each hand. One was stability, protection, and peace. The other was passion, excitement, and chaos. One was good for her and the other best, but when the storm stopped rolling back the ground from beneath her feet, she could only be holding one, or she would drown in the oceans that opened up from below.

She could dream of stopping the ground from rolling away or of stopping the ocean from rising, or even of sinking to its depths holding both stones, but then she would cause them both to be lost forever, and the light in her heart wouldn't let her do that.

From atop the last precipice of earth beneath her feet, she closed her eyes, opened her hand, and watched a stone fall away into the water. It swallowed the land and she was made to swim to the horizon, holding the remaining stone tightly as though she had never opened her hand.

* * *

"_I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."_

_- The Bell Jar, p. 77_

* * *

Plath, Sylvia._ The Bell Jar. _New York: Harper and Row, 1999. 25th Anniversary Ed. Print.

* * *

_In case it was hard to catch, the Damon segments are out of order. I did that on purpose. (:_

_This piece is in no way related to Plath's masterful _Bell Jar, _but it does follow the same train of thought I was on when I wrote my last TVD piece, titled "The First Time." That was probably obvious to those familiar with that last one, though that one was Damon-centric and this is probably more Elena-centric, and though it clearly doesn't get into anyone's head directly. Pardon my lack of political-correctness, but Damon isn't nearly this emo – hence, the narrative. _

_I'll leave it to you to decide which stone she kept, but I think we both know the answer._

_Au revoir._

_-Vena_

_P.S. Ee Gee, the amazing editor, does _not_ in fact stand for Elena Gilbert. Just FYI. The coincidence tickled me._


End file.
